BYU's Engineering Dynamic Duo

Tue Jun 03 00:00:00 MDT 2014

Cameron Taylor’s first great accomplishment as an upper-level engineering student was engineering a date with Sara Ehlert, which he then managed to turn into marriage. Now they are a dynamic duo with a passion to change the world.

“We want to make the world a better place,” Sara said. “We hope to work on cutting-edge technologies to make life happier and easier for people.”

Cameron sees robotics as an answer to future challenges. “This hands-on learning at BYU has been extremely helpful to me in understanding what I really want to do,” he said.

Sara assisted lab professor Aaron Hawkins with a project called “lab on a chip,” in which tiny devices put laboratory processors on a single wafer, allowing researchers to quickly and easily perform analyses on the go. She has also done research on how to get microchips to filter and measure blood particulates, which could have potential medical applications.

Last year Sara was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship - one of the most prestigious national scholarships for undergraduates.

Cameron is also a recipient of a scholarship himself, having earned a Weidman Leadership Scholarship at BYU.

As Sara and Cameron set out to change the world, they have considered how their accomplishments would have been diminished without generous donations. The scholarships - and the mentoring that they provided access to - were invaluable, they said. Without scholarship support, their prized education at BYU would have been limited to mere theory. Instead, they received a graduate-level education with an undergraduate degree.

Cameron and Sara feel it was this graduate-level research that enabled them to be accepted to the prestigious graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This summer, hundreds of missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will head to a new training center opened in Mexico today to prepare to share the message of Jesus Christ in Spanish.